The Block On Campus

My daughter is renting at The Block on 28^th for this fall semester. Horrible maintenance, takes forever to get major safety issues fixed, etc. Clearly it is not a priority to keep the property and students safe and secure. Took more than a month and multiple emails a to get garage gate functioning, and key pads to access entry doors still do not work after over a month of emails, etc. On top of it all, it is not inexpensive either. As a parent, would never recommend this property to anyone, ever.

The location is good for students, but those who live here or within 2 blocks are sick of being awakened multiple times a night EVERY WEEK for over 1 ½ years by their fire alarm. 1AM, 3AM, 6AM, 10AM for 20 min at a time! Austin FD rolls up and pushes a button knowing it is an issue. I am calling an inspector every time now to report them. They need to be fined! They said they fixed it last November. Nope! So exhausted and sick of them. Think about it… this affects a few hundred people trying to rest and study and work. It’s ridiculous that they don’t care. If they won’t spend the money to fix a life safety issue, do you think they will fix minor maintenance problems in your apartment?!

Honestly I loved living here (Block on 23^rd) because of its location. If I ever had any minor problems the maintenance was quick every time. The current maintenance man is the nicest man ever and he works very hard and he always fixes everything fast with a smile on his face. There’s not really a bug problem so you don’t have to worry about that except for the occasional roach every couple months but I smash ‘em quick. The roof is great and I love being able to go up there to relax. The elevator is fast which I know is something people love because every other apartment I go to their elevator is pretty darn slow. I’ve never had a problem with noise either, I think the walls are very thick. I’d recommend staying here.

Fall 2011 — Summer 2012: Block on Pearl South. I loathed this place. Better than the dorms on campus because I had my own room/​bathroom and a kitchen. However, this place is extremely overpriced. I’m glad they’re building new housing all over the West Campus to introduce more competition. Perhaps it will encourage them to work on their terrible customer service.
Awful service since day 1. Move in took 5 hours because everyone had to move in at a certain time. Unorganized, everyone was sweaty and cranky. The pictures that they post and the showroom were very nice but not at all reflective of the actual apartments. It was a let down. The floor is really scratched up. We have to wear slippers around because our feet get black if we walk barefoot. We’ve mopped it a dozen times and it’s strange, but it never gets cleaner. The oven was dirty when we moved in and we had to put a maintenance request to have it cleaned. We never received a form to record what was wrong with the apartment, so we will probably be billed for problems that were already there.
The walls and ceiling seem to be made of cardboard because I can hear everyone and everything around me. It also sounds like T-Rex’s live above me… all my light fixtures shake when they walk/​pound by. When it rains, it sounds like a giant, noisy coffee maker right by my head. If anyone is out on the balcony in the courtyard, their voices echo and go straight through your walls. They may as well be in your room.
It is so loud. Plan on your grades dropping. The noise basically starts Thursday night and ends Monday morning. The general community here is horrendous. There’s been throw up several times in the lobby and elevator. People leave their trash and left over alcohol in the elevator. It constantly smells of weed in the hall… even at 9 am. Aren’t you people supposed to be in college? Too cool for academics?
Parking Garage: Parking is $ 100/​mo. Which is absolutely insane… especially since my car was broken into (window smashed, stuff stolen, the works). When I reported it, the lady told me it had been happening a lot between the Pearl’s (north+south). Thanks for the heads up… I would have moved my car to a more secure location. $ 600 worth of damage to my car to steal $ 200 worth of property. No guest parking… you will be towed overnight. I saw poor reviews about the thefts before moving in and they sounded whiny and hardly seemed truthful. However, I love my car and regret not heeding the warnings. Hardly enough security/​cameras to discourage theft.
Outrageously incompetent management. They have no clue how to treat customers properly. Rude, inconsiderate, and uninterested in helping you with anything. Usually too busy lying/​leasing their apartments to incoming doe-​eyed freshman.
The elevators are constantly broken. It has not worked the last 3 weeks and has broken down before that. I believe it’s due to drunks holding the elevator open for hours as they try to round up the other drunks and head to 6^th street. Their security is a joke… make sure you have every type of insurance possible. Because there are definitely not enough cameras.
The appliances are nice and relatively new. Everything LOOKS nice but feels cheap. The most expensive thing in my apartment is probably the granite countertops. Electric stove… don’t prefer it, but it seems common nowadays.
Mail delivery is delayed. I was forced to open a PO Box on campus because my mail was regularly not delivered. Especially over winter break.
If you ever need a maintenance request, expect them to take at least 2 weeks to respond if its not an emergency. And hopefully you’re home awaiting their unknown arrival, or they’ll come back next week.
The west campus bus was always packed in the morning. Pearl/​22^nd is one of the last stops before campus and usually doesn’t stop because it’s so full.
People throw water balloons off their balcony at people walking along that stretch of Pearl. Just further illustrates the maturity level of this community.
Internet with Time Warner is a whole other story. It has been HELL. But its also included in the rent and is a different company. But internet is basically non-​existent after 11pm. Too slow to even google something, and my computer is normally VERY fast.
The view of the city on the rooftop is awesome and relaxing at night. About the rating: check the ‘filtered reviews’ at the bottom to understand it.

Living at the Block on Pearl is often like living in the middle of a rave.
Meaning, from Thursday to Sunday, every night, you will begin to hear the mating calls of drunken frat members calling across the courtyard at around five PM.
At around seven, the music will be cranked up and it will not stop. The wannabe fratsters will continue until the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes around four or four thirty they will turn down the music and ostensibly slip into drunken slumber.
Since, as a vaguely functional member of society I must wake up around three hours after this, this does not please me greatly.
Overall, if you’re looking for a posh, nice looking apartment with a crazy party scene and you don’t care about sleeping at normal times during the weekend– the block is for you.
Also, you may want to be a triathlete or at least a runner because the elevators are usually out. This wouldn’t be a big deal but I live on the sixth floor. With groceries, it’s not the most fun thing. But, it’s a good work out.
The maintenance guys seem pretty on top of everything. All of our complaints have been answered pretty promptly. Things malfunction every once in a while (so far the fridge, A/​C, vents, and washing machine). But, like I said, they do get fixed.
I’m the library dwelling, book reading, English majoring type of person so the paper thin walls and drunk, horny frat boys (and girls) were a major turn off to me. Also, the pot smoking guys on the balcony beneath mine who liked to strum their eukelele and have drunken conversations at 3am about Heidegger and Kant (and completely butcher their philosophies, if I do say so myself) were not that great either. I would never want to live here again but if you just want to party it up for a year– there’s little to no security here so get ready for a fun year.

If you have any common sense, do NOT under any circumstances live at this god forsaken piece of shit apartment complex.
I pay pretty much $ 850 a month for my room and what do I get: shitty management, shitty Internet, shitty maintenance. The word to sum up The Block: SHITTY. Excuse my language, but there was no other word to describe such a place as this than shit. The maintenance is terrible. There is only one man working for the whole apartment complex and I’m sure all the other Block locations as well. Therefore, it takes up to weeks to get anything fixed in the apartment. Also, things break or stop working in the apartment all the time. My sink constantly stops draining water.
The elevator NEVER works. Several times a day or week the elevator just stops working. It is so aggravating as I have to walk up and down stairs to even get to my car. What was even more annoying was the elevators didn’t even work when I was moving in. Imagine moving your mattresses and TVs with no elevator.
The Internet is beyond crappy. It is so slow, I can’t even do anything because it is that slow. It takes several minutes to even load a page. And trying to do schoolwork with this shit Internet is out of the picture. That is absolutely ridiculous.
The side door entrance to the building doesn’t even open from the outside. A few weeks ago the door would be open all the time so you didn’t need a clicker to get into the building. I’m assuming the idiots that work here finally realized that was not safe and got it fixed. They fixed it and even painted it gray (WOW) but now the door doesn’t even open from the outside and its been a week or two and they still haven’t fixed it. So I have to walk all the way around to get into the building. That new paint job doesn’t do much if the door doesn’t even open.
To sum up, this apartment is complete crap. Do not live here. If you want shitty service, shitty apartment, shitty Internet, shitty everything, then go ahead and live here. But if not, get far away from this POS apartment and go somewhere that is much better and cheaper. I am counting down the days till I move out of this shit hole apartment. They don’t even deserve 1 star, if only they had an option for no stars.

This place has terrible maintenance. The elevator stops working once a week, no joke. Don’t even get me started about the parking garage. The spaces are extremely narrow and your car is bound to get scratched on at least once. When it rains, there is a huge puddle of water all over the floor. In the summer, the lights are off and people break into cars. It’s not like the office will do much about it. They answer their phones like 30% of the time and they never get back to you if you leave a voicemail. They will only listen if you are a parent… maybe. The elevator is always extremely dirty and gross on the weekends because no one is there to clean. However, I like how the hallway is quiet and the building isn’t too high because it’s not as bad to use the stairs since the elevator is always broken anyways.

I wanted to get a one bedroom apartment this year as a transfer student because I brought my dog and cat and all of my own furniture. I chose the block on 28^th. The only real downfall is that you can’t see your individual unit before moving in, but that’s to be expected with 12 month leases by students, as your unit wont be vacated before that time. However, I thoroughly enjoy my little home at the block on 28^th. The balcony ended up being bigger than I thought it would be, and gets a nice breeze and shade throughout the day. The only complaint I have is that the a/​c was broken when i moved in so I had to stay in a hotel until it was fixed, but after calling in and emailing it was fixed and has been at a happy 72 degrees since. If you fill out a work request it may take a week or so at first unless its a really bad problem, and the office will call you to check up on how satisfactory the fix was. For instance if a lock is not working, you have a priority. It isn’t perfect, but its a cozy place. I love the granite countertops, and this was a big plus. Also, my unit has a remote controled fan and lighting in the living room, which I find very neat. I will say that although the internet is free, make sure you come with a router. The modem is free, definitely pick it up from TWC, because the wait to have it installed would take a few weeks, and make sure you bring a copy of your lease just in case the last resident didn’t return their modem. The router is a one time buy, so its definitely worth it for wireless. The only thing I wish they would replace is the carpet in the bedrooms, perhaps with something lower pile or a hardwood floor… but its clean and looks nice so its not a big deal. Remember that college students live in these units, so stuff will always be broken on move in that no one will have noticed, but the work staff is pretty decent in fixing things.

My roommate and I currently live at the 22.5 and Pearl Block and although the location is perfect in terms of campus and being in the midst of the central hub of west campus, the building and staff are beyond unsatisfactory.
For most of our time here the front door has been broken and at one point broken to the point where no one could get in or out. For some reason our garage is the worst lit garage (or so they say) of all the buildings, which is true if you compare our building (Pearl North) the the south building or the pearl building because those are the only ones i’ve been in, which makes it seem very unsafe. I know of at least 3 or 4 cars that have been broken into this year, one that has been broken into twice and parks across from me.
The staff here is ridiculous as well. Turn in a request form and they either «don’t receive» it or it takes them weeks to get around to it. When we moved in our fridge, and two lights were broken, and there was some kind of mold growing on the vents in my room. When we go and talk to them in their main office a few of the workers (mostly the girls) seem to not understand what they are doing or what we are asking them. They do not return e-​mails like they say they would, and their online payment system is always malfunctioning in some way or another.
Also over the Christmas break they were changing filters and left our front door unlocked for God knows how long, which infuriated my roommate and I because we still had valuable things in our apartment that we thought would be ok to leave here over the break. When we reported it all they had to say was «Oh, we’ll let them know»
Well I’ll let you know I’m happy to leave at the end of my lease.

Run while you still can. I lived in a dorm last year and honestly preferred it to living here. Staff is beyond unhelpful. My car has been broken into and vandalized twice in the parking garage (didn’t even have anything in it to steal!) The cameras «protecting» the residents don’t work. The doors are always broken so anyone can get in as they please, which is terrifying as all of Austin’s homeless people camp out right down the street. Internet never works. A/​C never works. A total scam for 800 bucks a month. There are soo many places to live in West Campus, for your own sake don’t pick a Block Apartment